YOUR MAMAS NOTES: All the New York City nabobs and snooty international real estate queens like Your Mama have done chewed their fingernails to the nubbins wondering and worrying was to become of the palatial penthouse doo-plex of the newly cut up Carhart Mansion which booze baron and entertainment tycoon Edgar Bronfman Jr. scooped up in November of 2007 for $18,750,000 and promptly put back on the market in less time than it takes a hooker to straighten her skirt and reapply lipstick.

Well children, thanks to vaunted celebrity real estate gossip Braden Keil at the NY Post, now we know. After reducing the asking price to $21,750,000, the penthouse on East 95th street was snatched up by an early forty something and exceedingly rich international socialite and biznessladee named Tamara Mellon for a reported $20,000,000.

While Your Mama realizes that most middle class mall walkers probably know diddly-squat about Miz Moneybags Mellon, the long haired broo-nette is a particularly well shod regular on the international social circuit having been married to (and bitterly dee-vorced from) troubled oil and banking heir Matthew Mellon of the insanely rich Pittsburgh Mellon family, natch. However, Miz Mellon doesn't live like the jet setting pampered princess she is on the back of on her ex-huzbands big fat (and inherited) bank account, she's also an enormously successful and well respected bizness woman in her own right who with the financial assistance of her rich daddy founded the Jimmy Choo shoo empire and subsequently transformed the swanky brand into a must-have among shoe fetishists and others who think $600 or more for a pair of strappy summer sandals is not only affordable, but also a reasonable price to pay.

According to Mister Keil, Miz Mellon lives primarily in London with her young daughter so why the former party queen turned shoe queen needs a tremendous $20,000,000 Manhattan pied a terre with taxes and maintenance fees in excess of $25,000 per month is a bit of a mystery to common pee-pole like Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter who do not run in the same couture-clad crowd as Miz Mellon.

According to listing information for the East 95th Street doo-plex penthouse, Miz Mellon's new Choo-plex measures in at 7,140 square feet. The dee-luxe digs appear to be currently configured with four principle bedrooms, four full and 2 half bathrooms plus one punishingly puny staff room and bath tucked back behind the kitchen.

The principal rooms include a forty-one foot living room with a wood buring fireplace, herringbone patterned par-kay flooring and access to a both an enclosed solarium and one of the penthouse's half dozen terraces. A second wood burning fireplace warms the formal dining room and a 320 square foot kitchen is well lit by a wall of windows and three sky lights.

All four bedrooms, including the master with its dual dressing room and large bathroom are on the main level and, unfortunately, flank the public spaces. The entire second floor of the penthouse is devoted almost entirely to a large room labeled "solarium" on the floor plan. A windowless half bathroom and a pantry area for whipping up snacks without having to expend the energy to walk down a flight of stairs fill out the remainder of the second floor square footage.

Quite frankly, Your Mama thinks the current configuration sucks. Not only do we find the traffic pattern constipated and quirky in an annoying way, the children will note with some flabbergast that the current layout in this hideously expensive apartment does not even include a damn library or a proper laundry room for Lucinda the Laundress to work her stain removal magic every Tuesday and Thursday mornings.

Fortunately, according to listing information, the seller–that would be Mister Edgar Bronfman Jr.–hired a smart architect to rework and re-imagine the floor plan. We have included that plan on the right of the floor plan image. Your Mama can only hope that the Christian Slater dater has a Birkin bag full of bucks left over after buying this big apartment in order to implement at least some of the ideas in Mister Bronfman's much more resolved and better considered floor plan.

So what do the children think? Which is the better layout? What works? What doesn't? Do any of you spatially inclined types want to take a crack at redesigning the floor plan? If Your Mama gets a few floor plan choices to choose from we'll pop them online next week and let the children bicker and vote for their favorite.

Your Mama isn't sure to which high priced property Mister Bronfman will be decamping with his half dozen children. What we do know is that in the last few years he dumped a reported $31,00,000 on a big house in Bridgehampton, flipped an (approx.) $20,000,000 co-operative apartment in Jackie-O's old building at 1040 Fifth Avenue as well as sold an extravagantly scaled East 64th Street townhouse for $50,000,000. Most recently he finally unloaded a 6 bedroom and 7.5 bathroom house on 3.2 acres in Amagansett which was last listed at $14,700,000.

On the main floor, I'd be loathe to tear out a good, wood burning fireplace for a kitchen that, frankly, is not going to see all that much use. I'd like to combine the existing & proposed dining rooms into a intimate, east/west oriented dining room with WBF & a guest suite with bath to its south, leaving the proposed library as is. The downside is having to traverse the foyer from the service elevator to stock the kitchen, which I'd leave where it is, albeit reconfigured (with a new bath & smaller laundry) out of the pokey bedroom, baths, laundry & staff office on the proposed plan; I'd leave the eastern (living room) half of the proposed plan alone.

Working from that plan, I would leave the rest of the main floor bedroom wing much as is to further close off the nanny and the brat, um, I mean darling little heiress, Araminta (is that Italian for Altoid?) in her charge, making two bedrooms & baths out of the three bedrooms & one bath along the north wall. I'll even let her keep the play area.

;-)

As for the penthouse, I'd like to keep the pavilion as is; a lovely spot for morning coffee. One could build out the current pantry & powder room into a bath & dressing room, keeping the solarium with its fireplace as the master. With the generous north terrace you could build out the exterior walls to the north & east for additional space without moving the mechanicals in the southeast corner or blocking the stairwell windows to the north.

I agree with much of what lil gay boy said...I am loathe to think of a kitchen directly behind the foyer--and hate to see the pavilion gone for mechanicals. And for a home at this price, I'd be damned if I wouldnt have a private terlit for each bedroom, even if it meant losing one (that awkwardly shaped thing needs the axe anyway) And I hate to think the living rooms fireplace would be removed for what appears to be some built ins?

That is some amazing floor plan pornography! I cannot count the number of times I've been back to look at it! Alright, I lie, I actually come back hoping and praying their is a new update and when there isn't one, I go look at the floor plan again.

The proposed floor plan is so much more efficient and beautiful. The existing one has a lot of flaws.

The present floor plan has a maid's room. The proposed one has none. Does Ms. Mellon propose doing all the cleaning herself, or will someone come in? Doesn't she have enough money to keep a full time maid? I don't find the new arrangement all that much better than the present one, and the master bedroom is smaller.